This is probably such an outdated topic, but I don’t really care. I’m so sick of so called ‘multistans’ in music. Whether it’s J-Pop, K-pop, T-Pop, a combination of multiple pops, it doesn’t matter. I can’t stand those people who claim to ‘stan’ like 10 different groups at the same time. These people go around social media with ‘multistan’ in their bio, list about 40 different groups and idols they claim to hardcore support, and have usernames listing every single fandom they claim to be a part of. I’m gonna say right now that I don’t believe any of these people are actually multistans.

First of all, I feel like people have forgotten what a ‘stan’ is. A stan isn’t just a regular old fan. A stan is a super fan. A stan is someone who buys their faves album every new release whether physically or digitally. A stan watches every ounce of content their faves release. A stan looks to be a part of every type of community dedicated to their faves. A stan is streaming their faves music from dawn until dusk. A stan is always doing whatever they can to vote for their faves, see their faves in person, and dedicate much of their time and wallets to their faves. You just can’t do that for 10+ groups. Hell, I’d argue it’s hard enough to do that with 2 groups! But I think we can all agree that a legitimate stan is far different than a causal fan.

And before anyone loses their minds, I’m NOT saying every single person who likes more than one music group is annoying or that there’s something wrong with them. I’m talking about a VERY SPECIFIC group of obnoxious people. If you’re a normal person who enjoys listening to, and considers themselves a fan of multiple different Asian Pop groups, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the annoying fake bandwagoners who claim to stan groups they barely care about and do nothing to support.

I don’t know how common this is anymore, as I’ve been out of the Asian pop music scene for about 4 years now, but I was in it for 7. And let me tell you, so called multistans (or multis) were everywhere and they were annoying. The folks were allegedly stanning about every group on the planet. I never believed the people who called themselves multis. Especially the ones who claimed to stan 8 different groups, each with 8+ members, all doing at the exact same time. Seriously? How can you learn all those damn people? How can you remember all those names, personalities, solo activities, talents, etc? How do you have time to watch content for all of those groups? Especially if they’re all relatively young groups and actively promoting. Sure, maybe if it’s some older groups who don’t do that much, I can see you stanning them alongside a newer group. But I’m expected to believe someone was able to actively stan BTS, NCT, Twice and 5 other really popular groups back in 2017? I’m sorry, but I don’t. Could you be a FAN of all of those people? Sure! Could you stan one and be a causal fan of the others? Of course! Stanning each and every one of them? I don’t buy it.

And why do people feel the need to do this? I have a few theories.

One: I think it’s a fear of missing out and concern over not knowing every single thing related to the community. Most people, when they get into K-Pop, they try to jump onto all of the popular and trendy groups so they can be part of all of the memes, trends, and current events. But they also want to have that one group they genuinely like, so they’ll claim that they stan all of these groups just so they can try to fit in with everyone. Hence why you’ll see random people in Youtube commenters named ‘ArmyOnceBlinkOrbitReveluvSoneinsert12otherfandomshere’ all over the place. Most of these folks may only truly be part of 2 fandoms in that list, but they enjoy listening to and occasionally checking out the rest of them, so they’ll go ahead and claim to ‘stan’ them all. They basically stan K-Pop/J-Pop/whatever-pop as an entity rather than the actual people.

Two: I think people see it as ‘boring’ to like, just one group. Not sure why, but I suppose it seems limiting, or maybe it gives off the vibes that you don’t like other groups. Like “you’re not a k-pop fan, you’re just a Red Velvet fan”, “You don’t listen to J-Pop, you only listen to AKB48”. So in a desperate attempt to seem like a ‘real fan’ they go out of their way to find as many groups as they can through variety shows, music shows, and the like until they can find a bunch that catch their interest enough to want to learn more about them. Then they’ll overload on as much content as they can from each group so they can claim to be a multistan.

I admit that I was kind of like this when I originally got into J-Pop, K-Pop, whatever. I didn’t want to listen to ‘just one group’ so I tried to find all of the popular/trendy groups to follow as many as I could and feel like a real K-Pop fan, and not ‘just’ a Buddy or ‘just’ a Topp Klass. Back in the 2016, I literally sat around watching Arirang all day and trying to learn any group I saw. One day I literally spent the entire day learning all of the members of Up10tion for literally no reason. I don’t and never did stan them, nor was I even a casual fan, yet for some reason I felt the need to learn all of the members. And the same was the case for numerous other groups.

I’ll tell you right now, this didn’t go over well and I VERY QUICKLY learned that being a multistan (and hell, even just a multifan), wasn’t for me. Following a bunch of people like that is draining and you start to realize the people you don’t actually care much for. I stopped really worrying about trying to know everyone and everything in K-pop and J-Pop and just focused on the few groups I actually really cared about. You’ll NEVER catch me saying I stan Keyakiaka46, but I’ll gladly tell you I enjoy some of their songs. Why can’t other people do that? Why do they have to jump onto every group they see? Well that brings me to theory three.

Three: We can’t ignore the people (and I sadly think this a huge chunk of them) who do it purely for clout; the “chart stans”. They want to be an army, blink, once, and whatever else is the most popular fandom just so they can brag about numbers….numbers they likely don’t even contribute to. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who never cared about, or only causally enjoyed BTS, who immediately hurdled themselves onto the bandwagon as soon as they became really popular and proclaimed themselves as the biggest stans. Now everyone just has to ride the hype train of whoever is the trendiest group that everyone is talking about, so they can be in the loop and brag about how much they love this super successful group. It is beyond obnoxious. Anytime you see people bouncing from group to group to group, based on who is doing better, you know it’s only about the numbers. And I might need to do a separate blog on this, but I can’t STAND people who only care about a group for their numbers. These people want the critical acclaim of saying they were a fan of X GROUP either before they got big or while they were popping off, and that’s why they latch on to so many, hoping that at least ONE of them will go big.

Because, you’ll notice how most of these ‘multistans’ only ever seem to multistan super popular groups. I never see ‘multis’ of a bunch of mid-tier groups. Maybe one amidst a bunch of huge groups. Otherwise, it’s popular group + popular group + SUPER popular group. And I’m supposed to believe they aren’t only supporting for the numbers. Okay sure, maybe some people out there just so happen to ONLY like really popular groups. But I still don’t consider them stans unless they are actively contributing to the growth of those groups. Again, you need to basically be rich to do that.

And there are always those multis who claim to be stans of a group, yet whenever that group is brought up, said alleged stan always has something negative to say about them.

But I’m sure some people will tell me that it is possible to be stan of 50 different groups at the same time, and that I just didn’t try hard enough. To these people, I’d like to ask, when it’s award show time and all of your 500+ faves are nominated for the same award, who do you vote for? When it’s music show voting and your faves are competing against each other, who are you donating your points to? When the inevitable fanwars break out between all of your fandoms, who’s side are you taking? Whose album are you going to prioritize buying? Unless you’re rolling in money, there’s no way you can finically support that many groups, especially when most albums (especially J-Pop albums) have numerous different versions. To any self-proclaimed multistans out there, tell me how you do it. I’d love to know.

And let’s also talk about the mutlis who only claim their group/fandom when it’s convenient? Let’s be real, most of these multis truly only prioritize one group/fandom. It’s quite common to see so called multis who claim to have 10 bias groups, but they almost always only take the side of one group in particular during fanwars. People can tear their other ‘faves’ to shreds whenever they want, but as soon as their actual favorite group gets criticized, that’s when they go into action. Then they’ll go back and claim the side bias group once their fanwar is over. I would have no issue if these people would just admit that their bias group is their ultimate favorite group and they obviously care more about them than the others (or in some cases don’t even like the others). But no, they claim to love every single group equally, yet their actions never show it.

Also, side tangent here, can someone please tell me how on earth anyone can stan multiple groups with 8+ people in them?? I’m gonna be honest, I don’t believe for one second that someone who claims to stan a bunch of different large groups cares about all of the members. I’d be willing to bet that they might only like 1 or 2 people per group. These days it seems impossible to like all of the members in a 4 member group, and I’m supposed to believe someone can EQUALLY care about 40+ different people across numerous groups? Sorry, but I will never believe that. I could never even pretend I’d support that many dang people equally. And if you actually follow these people, you’ll see that they don’t either. You’ll see that they might post stuff related to their supposed ‘bias groups’ out of obligation, but once it comes to individual activities, they’re only posting about their top faves and have no clue what any of the other members are doing. And if you ask them, they still argue to death that they stan them, despite the fact that if any of those other members left the group they wouldn’t give a damn. These people need to just admit that they like certain individuals in a group and some songs from the group , but aren’t stans. There’s literally nothing wrong with that.

What also annoys me is how these people always act like they have it so hard all the time.

“Oh, it’s so hard to be a multi when there’s a fanwar and all of your faves are involved… :( ”. 

“The feeling when it’s time to vote for year-end awards, but you’re a multi :( ”

“When you’re a multi and “insert ridiculous self-made problem here :(”

As if they didn’t choose to do this…. How are you gonna be out here proclaiming to be a stan of 550 groups, then whine about it when it becomes inconvenient. And again, you already know that most of these people are only putting on a show to make it seem like they care about those 550 groups when in actuality they only care about one, and just want to associate themselves with the others in case it becomes beneficial to them.  After all, if you stan damn near every group at an award show, well gee golly, you’re guaranteed that all of your ‘faves’ will go home with an award!

“OMG its year end awards, and I just saw that my 6^th bias group won the best dance award. I totally wanted my other faves to win, but I’m glad I can hop into the party zone my other fandom is having for that good clout!!!!”

I also have to bring up this new type of Kpop fan, who wanders around across different social media pages for groups (either official or fanpages), asking “Hey should I stan this group????” Like bruh, if you need to ask, then clearly you don’t enjoy the group enough to stan them. If you were really interested, you wouldn’t need to ask someone else if you should stan. You’d just do it. And btw, someone who needs to be convinced to ‘stan’ a group, likely isn’t going to be anything more than an occasional casual fan IF THAT. I didn’t need to ask someone if I should stan Red Velvet, I did it because I immediately enjoyed their music, the members, and everything else and I WANTED to support them in any way I could.

Similarly, there are the people who will be supporting their fav group then out of nowhere, will make a post on their socials saying “Hey recommend me some groups in the comments and I’ll see if I want to stan them!!!!” Like sis, are you good? Why are you out here trying to catch music groups like Pokémon?  I think what really bugs me about these people is the damn laziness. They can’t be bothered to take two seconds to pull up weekly music shows and check out groups on their own. They need other people to provide the groups for them. And again, if people are going to be this lazy in simply deciding if they like a group enough to follow them, they are unlikely to actually become an actual stan and support the group through actual purchases/streaming, or anything other than simple retweets for major accomplishments.

And you guys are probably wondering why I’m being such a gatekeeper about this, and taking everything so seriously, but it’s because I really hate seeing people call themselves ‘stans’ of a person or group, when that person does jack to support them. It takes no effort to like a group casually and drop their fandom name in your social media bio, but it does take effort to buy or stream an album. If you’re a ‘stan’ only when it’s convenient, but then you’re M.I.A 99% of the time because you really don’t give a damn about the group, please stop calling yourself a stan. Just say you’re a casual fan, it’s not that hard. You’re not ‘lesser’ than anyone else, just because you aren’t a hardcore stan.

Recently I’ve seen this happening with a J-Pop group called Psychic Fever. The group, I guess, went a bit viral on TikTok, and now random-asses are flying out of the woodwork to claim that they now STAN them, when in actuality, they literally only care about them in the realm of using their songs for TikTok dances and little else. Even worse, some of these so called stans literally only care about this group because of the racial background of a few members. If those members were pure Japanese like 99% of other J-Pop idols, they wouldn’t give a damn. I’ll go more into this in a future blog, but stuff like this annoys the hell out of me. Because these people aren’t real fans, and certainly not stans.

I’ve seen far too many people go around, talking about how X group is their bias group and they stan them to death, meanwhile they never do anything to support them, only acknowledge them when they need to use them to brag about numbers, only acknowledge the existence of certain members when they need them for a farwar, can’t even be bothered even make a tweet about them that has nothing to do with numbers, and only ‘stan’ for the prestige of being a fan of X popular group.

Why would you even want such a person calling themselves a stan? It is ridiculous to me that people just throw the word stan around as if simply listening to a group occasionally makes you a stan. Or as if watching a reaction video makes you a stan. Listen up, doing the bare minimum doesn’t make you a stan. And pretending to like a group when it’s convenient and otherwise ignoring them doesn’t make you a stan. I think Asian Pop stans need to just enjoy the music and stop worrying so much about being a stan.